PRINCE RUPERT, B.C. — In a muddy clearing carved out of a swathe of coastal B.C. forest, workers are busy laying the foundation for one of Canada’s best hopes of redrawing its supply chains in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war. 

The nearly $1-billion Canxport facility, currently under construction on an 83-acre site on the southern edge of the Port of Prince Rupert, will more than double the port’s export capacity when it comes online in early 2027. Once completed, products like lumber, cereal grains and plastic pellets used in the manufacturing process will arrive at the port on one of three rail lines before being hoisted aboard ocean vessels by giant rail-mounted cranes.

Financed by Canadian National Railway, Montreal-based Ray-Mont Logistics, Prince Rupert Port Authority and federal agency Canada Infrastructure Bank, Canxport received federal environmental approval in early 2023, long before Trump’s tariff threats threw the global trade order into chaos. Today, however, the project has taken on new relevance as countries scramble to reinforce supply chains, and as Prince Rupert—North America’s closest port to Asia— looks to lower its dependence on imports and reduce its exposure to U.S. tariffs.  

“On the export logistics side of things, being able to more than double our export throughput—that’s huge for us,” said Jeff Stromdahl, marketing manager of the Prince Rupert Port Authority, the organization that’s the lead proponent of Canxport. 

Despite being located in a picturesque town of roughly 12,000 people, the Prince Rupert port punches above its weight. It is Canada’s third biggest port, behind only Vancouver and Montreal, and handles about $60 billion in goods per year, according to Stromdahl. In addition to the container yard, the port also has designated export hubs for grain and propane. 

The majority of the port’s container business is currently in imports, a huge chunk of which—around 87 per cent—come from China. Of that, the Port of Prince Rupert ships more than half of its imported cargo by rail to U.S. destinations like Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis and Memphis. Such shipments are therefore exposed to Trump’s latest tariffs on Chinese imports, which now stand at an eye-watering 145 per cent.

Stromdahl describes the Trump tariffs as introducing “both opportunities and challenges—and potential risks,” particularly on the container side of the port’s business. “Geopolitical unrest, tariffs and trade uncertainty has helped solidify our need for market diversification and market access points,” he said. 

While Stromdahl expects Chinese goods will continue to flow into the U.S. despite steep tariffs—“trade policy isn’t going to change that overnight,” he said—a prolonged trade battle could eventually crimp consumer spending, thereby putting a slowdown on Prince Rupert’s volumes. The Canxport facility is just one of the port’s planned expansions that will boost export capacity.  

The Port Authority is in the early stages of building a second container terminal just south of the existing one that will double its current capacity. In May of last year, Calgary-based oil and gas firm AltaGas and its joint-venture partner, the Netherlands’’s Royal Vopak, reached a final investment decision on their $1.35-billion export hub at Prince Rupert, the largest investment in the port’s history.

The terminal will off-load liquid petroleum gas—products like propane or butane known collectively as LPGs—from railcars and ship them to Asian markets, where demand for LPGs is high. Prince Rupert’s close proximity to China and other markets gives AltaGas a “structural advantage in delivering LPGs to Asia with the shortest shipping time,” CEO Vern Yu said in a statement following the final investment decision. 

Canxport will initially have the capacity to handle around 400,000 shipping containers per year, a substantial boost to the port’s current capacity of around 1.6 million.

The new terminal will “improve the balance of import and export cargoes” at Prince Rupert and drive “local economic and employment benefits,” according to the Canada Infrastructure Bank. The agency backed the project with a $150-million loan, its first port investment, in May 2024. 

Still, Trump’s efforts to restructure global trade through punishing tariffs could pose major hurdles for Prince Rupert, which remains heavily reliant on the U.S. market. 

While Vancouver is closer to the U.S. Midwest than Prince Rupert, the rail line from Prince Rupert has comparably less elevation, Stromdahl said, and is therefore a favoured route for Asian shippers. “The U.S. Midwest is our bread and butter,” he said. 

Ashley Furniture, a U.S.-based furniture manufacturer and retailer, makes much of its product in Vietnam and is a major importer through Prince Rupert. Autoparts makers and other firms that provide just-in-time products, or those that aren’t amenable to sitting in storage, are also major clients.

Unlike other major Canadian ports like Montreal or Vancouver, Prince Rupert doesn’t serve a major local market, meaning that almost all of the cargo it handles could technically flow through other ports. That exposes it to trade rifts more than other hubs—a reality that has forced its crews to emphasize efficiency in an effort to keep customers coming back, Stromdahl said. 

“What’s unique about this port is that the men and women who work down here and work within the gateway understand that on a daily basis, they have to earn that cargo. It’s not taken for granted that it’s going to be coming every single day.” 

This reporting is made possible by the generous support of the Covering Canada: Election 2025 Fund, a non-partisan granting initiative by the Public Policy Forum, the Rideau Hall Foundation and the Michener Awards Foundation. Its goal is to help journalists cover election stories that would otherwise go untold.